Good night, good knight: Dr. Jacob Hudson Carruthers, one of the great African-American scholars, historians and educators died at his home in Chicago, Illinois, on 4 January 2004, after a long illness. This is a tribute by the Kemetic Institute of which he was a founding member.

For 32 years, Dr Jacob Carruthers was a professor of history and education at the Centre for Inner City Studies of Northeastern Illinois University. His leadership pioneered the development of both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Inner City Studies, which influenced the development of hundreds of students who sought careers working in urban environment. He also fostered the Chicago School of African-Centred Thought that manifested itself in the community-based Communiversity.

Dr. Carruthers established himself through his work with leading African and African-American scholars in the world through his leadership in the development of a plan to rewrite African history under the aegis of the African World History Project of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC). These scholars include the late John Henrik Clarke, Cheikh Anta Diop, John G. Jackson, Chancellor Williams, Charysee McIntyre, and Bobby E. Wright. Contemporaries include Anderson Thompson, Asa Hilliard, Leonard Jefferies, Chinweizu, Theophile Obenga, Yosef ben-Jochannan, Ayi Kwei Armah, Kobi Kambon, and Marimba Ani.

Dr. Carruthers authored several important books that paved the way and provided the framework for the African-centred approach to the research and study of classical African history and African civilisation.

His works include: Intellectual Warfare (1999), Mdw Ntr (1995), Essays in Ancient Egyptian Studies (1984), and The Irritated Genie (1985). Other significant works include Science and Oppression (1972) and African or American (1994).

He co-edited Reconstructing Kemetic Culture (1990), The African Worldview (1986), and The Preliminary Challenge (1997). Many of his works challenged the prevailing ideas in the field of Egyptology as well as the role of African people in the development of civilisation in the ancient Nile Valley.

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Jacob Carruthers excelled academically. Following graduation from Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston, Texas, he attended Samuel Huston College in Austin where he earned a bachelor's degree.

After the Sweatt vs. Painter United States Supreme Court decision in 1950, he, along with Hemon Marion Sweatt and three other blacks, integrated the University of Texas Law School. Jurisprudence, however, was not his calling, and he did not return the following year.

In 1951, facing the draft and the Korean War, he volunteered for the United States Air Force. After serving in the Air Force, he enrolled in the Texas Southern University where he earned a master's degree in government.

His passion for learning and a sense of service led him back to the classroom. From 1961 to 1964, Dr. Carruthers taught at Prairie View College in Texas.

After earning a doctorate in political science from the University of Colorado at Boulder--the first African-American to do so--he taught at Kansas State College in Pittsburg, Kansas for two years.

Thereafter, his career led him to Chicago, and in 1968, he joined the faculty of the Department of Inner City Studies Education at the Centre of Inner City Studies of Northeastern Illinois University.

Serving as a consultant on African-centred education to the Chicago Public Schools and other school systems throughout the United States, Dr. Carruthers was influential in the African-centred education movement. He was a co-founder of the teacher training programme, Teaching About Africa. He was also sought after nationally and internationally as a lecturer on African history. He leaves behind a wife, Linda (Ife); three sons, Jacob III, Darnell, and Christopher; a daughter, Tawakalitu Jogunosimi.

In 1981, Dr. Carruthers became the high priest of the Temple of the African Community of Chicago that was established to meet the spiritual needs of those who sought to practice ancient Nile Valley spirituality.

He was a founding member of ASCAC and the Kemetic Institute which sponsors the annual Teaching About Africa programme for teachers and school administrators in the USA. In 1995, he was initiated into elderhood in a community ritual and took the name Jedi Shemsu Jehewty (the one who speaks is a follower of Jehewty).

Dr Carruthers firmly believed that a large part of liberating the African-American people came from understanding and connecting history, culture and heritage. In this context, he earned respect conducting study tours to Egypt, Ethiopia, the Nile Valley, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire and other parts of West Africa.